Thursday, March 02, 2006

Sloppy Lennies

Here's my kidified version of good ol' Disorderly Lentils (aka Sloppy Lennies) from McDougall: Throw 1 cup rinsed red lentils, 2 cups water, 1 cup smooth tomato sauce (I use my Vita-Mix to turn chunky tomato sauce, cooked carrots and steamed kale into an innocent-looking puree so a certain someone will eat it in peace), 1 TB soy sauce and a pinch of dried basil into a saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Ta da! Serve on wheat buns or toast.Next, this fruit salad combination has been a favorite with the kids in our family for years: combine equal parts fresh pineapple and banana slices, drizzle with a bit of agave nectar or Just Like Honey (which really does taste just like honey, it's amazing!), and top with lightly toasted walnuts. The acidic pineapple and drizzle of "honey" keeps the bananas from getting too brown before lunch time.Finally, for dessert, look what just arrived at our local health food store: Betty Lou's Organic Smackers. Yes!! Chocolate peanut butter or almond butter cups with the word "vegan" right there on the front of the wrapper.Verdict: He ate about half the bread and most of the Lennies -- next time half a bun. This fruit salad was a big hit, as always. And the Smackers? We are sooo in heaven, you have no idea. They're not as good as the Reese's cups I miss so much -- they're better. 4 stars.

Oh, I wish we had more of the selection you have in the US!! I have never seen the "Just Like Honey" product. The Smackers I've seen online, but again, not in our local stores. I posted about a quick ice-cream pie today, and I would love trying this honey product to drizzle as a topping (or maybe the crumbled smackers... they sound very sinful)! :)

Great tip on the fruit salad! It sounds delicious. I will definitely try it for my lunches.I was so inspired by you that I got the "laptop lunchox" and use it for my lunch everyday. It's been a big hit in the office!

Jennifer, thanks for the inspiration! I was at a loss for what to cook for dinner tonight, and I made my own version of sloppy lentils with what I had on hand. I never much cared for Sloppy Joes as a child, (well, I never cared for beef, period,) but I loved these! Hooray for veggie comfort food!

Thanks for all these great lunchbox ideas! I am looking at the Disorderly Lentils from the McDougall Q&E cookbook right now and thinking about making it for dh's lunchbox tomorrow.Jennifer, you are everso clever!

Hi there, I am such a fan of your site! I just got one of the lunchboxes and I have a question, does the front of it close completely all the way on yours? It seems to be latched (although imho the katch could be more secure) but there are gaps along the side and a bit in the front. Is that normal? Thanks for any help, sincerely, Joanna

I wish I could prepare meals half as well as you can. It's the preparation that gets me. I live in the moment and I'm pretty impulsive, so preparing things in advance kind of clashes with how I operate, you know?

i had stopped eating reese's peanut butter cups and had started eating the natural food brand ones and when i ate a reese's cup one day i found they were actually not very tasty, too sweet. although i always was more of a reese's pieces fan...

I adore red lentils, and I have one of my fave ways to serve them posted on my blog "le bistro vulcan" at http://www.lebistrovulcan.blogspot.com. I'm going to be posting some more of my recipes, and I'd love you to come and see (that's you in the plural sense). I hope to get some more posted over spring break! You can also find my main blog, "the vegan vulcan", by clicking on my profile. I'd love to hear from some of the vegan lunch box fans!

Jennifer- I have two boys and two of that same 10 oz. thermos. I am impressed that shmoo eats so much of his food! It must be good! Here is a link for some cute Thermos options:http://www.thermos.com/thermos/cfm/products.cfm?cat=lnch&subcatid=32

OMG!! I've bookmarked you Jennifer. These lunches are the bomb! I'm vegetarian and tinkering with going full out vegan. I need recipies cause mine are so boring!!!!! I think I'm in love!love peace and hairgreaseKim

My 12 yo said, "this guy's got it made!" While some of the foods are not to his liking as a picky preteen, he loves the pictures and may be willing to try some of them. My other four have seen it and love to check it with me each day.

I have a recipe I want to try, for mujadarrah, a great dish I like in middle eastern restaurants, brown lentils and rice with carmelized onions with yogurt on top. Okay, you guys would have to use a vegan substitute for the yogurt, because yogurt is crucial to the dish.

My question is are brown lentils the kind of light beige ones, which are the only remotely brown lentils I can find in the store?

you have encouraged my non-profit group to work this lunchbox into our workshops. We do environmental workshop for schools. We have one about solid waste. We made a station with all kinds of lunchboxes for kids to explore. We have plastic ones, metal ones, bag lunches, fabric bags, tiffens and the wonderful laptop. The laptop is nearly always the most popular. See our site at www.dcplanet.cathanks for the idea.

Shmoo's lunches look so delicious! Your site is very inspiring - I hope to send mine to school with nutritious meals like these. Thanks for showing us an example of how it can be done! I'm going to try your fruit salad - we have 2 walnut trees in the backyard & I'm always looking for ways to use them.

Your site is so crafty and inspiring that I have linked it on my blog for my small circle of friends to enjoy!! Thanks a bunch and I hope to try some of these tasty treats soon!! Got to do some serious shopping.

Thank you! I just made a huge batch of sloppy lennies for my family, and even my cheesyfriedbacon brother loved it. I added mushrooms just because, well...I like mushrooms.Also those peanut butter cups are hot stuff, Mmmm.

You are a total inspiration! Although I am not vegan, I have adjusted our eating habits immensesly since my husband came home from his annual physical with high-cholesterol (at the age of 30)! Our diet includes less meat & more soy, and I now incorporate many organic and whole foods into our diet. Things that are crunchy and come in a bag (hee hee) are no longer allowed in our house. Thank goodness hubby is on board with it (I think losing his mom to cancer recently has made him reconsider this whole goofy health-thing...). Anyway - sorry for the too-much-info, but I just wanted to let you know that your blogs are all wonderful & I feel fortunate to have stumbled across them.Thank you & keep up all your wonderful work!Hugs,Rivkeh

There must be a lot of moms and dads in here, so I hope you won't mind an off topic question. There's an online auction to support breast cancer research/treatment at http://www.suttermedicalcenter.org/quiltauction and there's a 44 inch by 44 inch quilt I was thinking of getting for my niece, for her one year birthday. My question is, is that big enough for a one year old? I live several states away, so I have no idea what size she is. Thanks.

>>I just got one of the lunchboxes and I have a question, does the front of it close completely all the way on yours? It seems to be latched (although imho the katch could be more secure) but there are gaps along the side and a bit in the front. Is that normal?

Hmm, no gaps in ours -- they close quite snugly on all sides and the latch is secure. If I were you I would contact the company and tell them about it; it's important that the box closes well because the box acts as the container lids to keep things in place. Good luck!

Thanks, sonya and traceyd for the reese's recipe! It might be fun to make homemade pb cups.

>>when i ate a reese's cup one day i found they were actually not very tasty, too sweet.

Okay, I'll keep telling myself that. Actually, I remember thinking the same thing about Hostess cupcakes when I tried them after years and years -- "Yuck, I used to like that?"

Hi, Karen Anne! Oooh, I LOVE Mujadarrah. Shmoo won't touch it because of the onions, but there's no way I'm leaving them out. I use the recipes in "World Vegetarian" by Madhur Jaffrey (pg. 404) and "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" (pg. 302), but they don't call for yogurt. Does that mean it's really Mizidra, as Ladyrachellynn says? Either way, it's one of the great things in life.

>>My question is are brown lentils the kind of light beige ones, which are the only remotely brown lentils I can find in the store?

Brown lentils are lentils that still have their husks on them. I've seen green, brown, blueish-grey ("French"), and crimson lentils. They can all be used interchangeably, with perhaps a bit of difference in the cooking time. Red or yellow lentils have had their husks removed; they cook a lot faster and dissolve more into the dish.

>>Would it work the same with green lentils?

Yes, I've made it with green lentils before. You have to cook it quite a bit longer (at least an hour, until the lentils are soft). The texture is not quite the same, but it's still tasty.

Hi, Rivkeh -- Gee, that sounds familiar! I only wish my husband were on board with healthy eating like yours is! Keep up the good work.

You're welcome, m.c.t.! I tried the almond butter ones, too, and they were mighty good!

Whenever I crave Reese's cups, I just make them myself-- mix peanut butter, margarine, and powdered sugar together (I don't use exact measurements, I just mix to taste-- about 1cup pb, 2 tbsp marg, and 1/2 cup sugar?). Then I melt dark chocolate, spoon some into the bottom of paper cups, add some peanut butter mix, and spoon some chocolate over the top. Then I put them in the fridge overnight to cool, and voila! "reese's" cups! They're definitely not healthy, but they're easy to make and definitely satisfy the craving for peanut butter cups.

I have a Vitamix too! Have you tried many of J. Stepaniak's uncheese/fondue/sauce recipes in it? It works *beautifully* because it heats up and 'cooks' the sauces (the ones that call for cornstarch to thicken), eliminating that 'heat-and-stir-in-a-saucepan-on-the-stovetop' step (saving time AND dishes!)....

I love my vitamix and tried this recipie! Jennifer, I am so glad I found this blog. If you ever put out a cookbook....PLEASE let us know! I tried the disorderly lentil and because I couldn't find red lentils, I used regular ones. I also added a bit of applejuice concentrate to the mixture, because I'm a sweet hound. But it was wonderful! My little one loved it! She is a veg hound as she too is vegetarian. I've been tinkering with the notion of veganism. I guess I'm holding on to the antiquated belief that she won't get all of her nutrition. Although previously we were octovegetarian...eat fish and eggs, I've recently taken fish slowly out of our diet (except for my hubby's) and drink only soy milk also. I love your blog. Thank you for the subtle inspiration! And I really think the lunch box company owes you BIG! *smile*

As a vegan, where is all of your protein requirements (I believe around 30grams/day) coming from. I was semi vegan before my pregnancy and now I am poultry again which I would like to get off of but I am also very active in exercise and I have to be sure about my protein and such. Also, is natural honey not in a vegan diet?

Lisa-- you can get protein from foods such as legumes, tofu, tempeh, seitan, or textured vegetable protein. There are also a whole bunch of prepackaged meat analogues which are high in protein. Vegetable protein is great-- easier to store, to use, cheaper, and healthier. I'd definitely give it a try. There are vegan professional athletes who do great on a vegan diet.

I was a very strict vegan for a whole whopping 5 months. My problem, I'm hypoglycemic. My body simply wasn't metabolizing vegetable protein fast enough and so my blood sugar was doing a wonderful roller-coaster routine. So, I went back to eating meat and stayed that way for a couple of years...until I just couldn't stand the whole issue with the chemicals, hormones and other crap that is injected into pretty much everything that walks, crawls, slithers or flies if it's going to be used for food. I was smarter this time, though. I am starting out on a vegetarian diet until I can figure out ways to balance out my blood sugar naturally and without any form of animal product.

Here is my question, though...up until about 15 years ago, I could eat bananas, walnuts, pecans, avocados, raw carrots, cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon like there was no tomorrow. Then I started getting an itchiness in the back of my throat. No biggie, I thought...Then I started into overproduction of phlegm. Okay, maybe it's just a cold...Then it started burning my mouth. Finally, my tongue began to swell. Needless to say, I don't eat these things anymore.

I can eat banana bread if it has no walnuts in it as whatever enzyme my body has suddenly decided it doesn't like is killed off with the heat of the oven. Same thing with cooked carrots. Melons, walnuts and pecans, avocados...no dice.

Sadly, these very things are loaded with vitamins, potassium and natural sugars that would really help with my blood sugar levels if I suddenly needed a "boost"...

The question? Yes? It's right here...I've noticed that a lot of your recipes and suggestions call for melon balls as a side, walnuts and bananas, etc. What would you recommend as a replacement to these items?

Next, what would you recommend in helping to overcome what is quite obviously a food allergy?

Lastly, what would you recommend to replace two of my favorites...scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese?

You can scramble tofu! I know this sounds weird, but it's surprisingly good. There are a whole bunch of recipes out there (just try googling scrambled tofu or something), adjust the seasonings to your taste. I just do drained firm tofu with some tumeric, a little plain soymilk, salt, pepper, and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

I can't help as much with the cheese, though I hear Follow Your Heart is good. (I never liked cheese anyways =/)

Hello There. I'm a 16 year old vegetarian who loves your lunch box blog! I've actually thought about going vegan because of it. Also, I was wondering what lunch-box you use? and those little containers? so cute!